


Integrity

by amoeve



Series: Zutara Week 2015 [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 05:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4423163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoeve/pseuds/amoeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady still creep about of nights. Or, when the politics of the court become too much, Katara reminds Zuko that there are more efficient and more fairytale ways of solving social problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Integrity

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one sitting, and once again, it isn’t beta’d. This is also an idea that I’d love to explore in more detail in another story, but alas, I didn’t have the time.

The _oni_ , so the stories go, are spirits who were once people. They committed terrible crimes and were exiled – not just from their homes, but from their humanity, for after years of longing and business left unfinished, the most restless spirits did not die. They became something more, and less, than human.

The tales of the Blue Spirit are contradictory. “He is a monster and a robber,” say the people of Ember Island, “he started revolutions and tore our glorious country apart.”

Ember Island is populated solely by families of high-ranking ministers in the Fire Nation court. They believe that there must be a strict hierarchy, or there will be no order.

The people of the eastern islands are closer to the Earth Kingdom. They are farmers, not philosophers, and they are regularly overrun with the men that the Fire Nation admirals and generals move towards the front lines of the war. They solve their problems among themselves and must always pay homage – and taxes – to their local lords.

They say, “The Blue Spirit was a noble who tried to help the common people. He educated his serfs and paid them from his family’s treasury. When he was discovered, he was whipped and exiled, and his estates were confiscated by the army.

“He lost everything. The woman he loved would see him no longer. His people were crushed under the heel of labouring to fill the army’s stores. So he would creep into officers’ houses and lighten the load of their richness. He would take food and money to the servants while they slept. He tried to make a difference in the world.”

“Did he die?” sometimes the children ask, when they are told the story for the first time.

“Yes,” say the rich people on Ember Island, and the nannies who raise children in the capital. “He starved to death. A fitting punishment for one who defied his place in the world.”

“Spirits cannot die,” say the farmers and the labourers who tell themselves tales because tales are what keep hope alive. “He wakes every time there is great injustice to make his presence known.”

When Zuko becomes Fire Lord, crowned by the Avatar himself, it is said by all that the Spirit World looks kindly on Zuko’s rule.

“Well, the Blue Spirit isn’t bothering us any more,” shrug the aristocrats, remembering the resurgence of his presence during Fire Lord Ozai’s reign. “Perhaps the spirits are smiling on him after all.”

*

Katara finds out afterwards that Painted Lady is not simply a river spirit. Once, she was a woman who loved and protected her home.

Jang Hui – the river, not the town – was the lifeblood of an entire island. The farms relied on the floodwaters bringing rich silt down from the mountains, and the broad estuary, with its relatively gentle tides, meant that sea-ships could bring their wares to the natural harbours far inland. In her life and after it, the Painted Lady loved the river. The spirit world was strong in that place, and she became immortal.

Jang Hui – the town, not the river – has become much more prosperous since the end of the war, and the return of foreign trade to the islands.

“The Avatar visited us during the war,” they say, “and restored balance to our river. The war nearly killed us, and drove away the Painted Lady. But the Avatar and his friends destroyed the factory and helped us clean the river. Though that waterbending girl,” they say, with a twinkle in their eyes, “she certainly helped the most.”

They do not mention the factory, or give away Katara’s secret. But the Painted Lady is seen often after that, guarding ships on the river and healing anyone who is sick, not just the villagers who live on the river.

After the war, they return to Jang Hui: Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, and they bring Zuko along for the ride.

“You need to see your people outside the capital,” Katara had said to him, firmly. So they go, openly, and reveal themselves for who they really were, and confess to the villagers what the full tale was.

In the frenzy and festival of a visit from the Fire Lord and the Avatar, many of the details of the tale get lost in the mix. But something that sticks is what Sokka tells them his sister screamed at him one day: _I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me_.

What they remember is that it was a time of war, and a waterbender had no cause to help enemy civilians, except that it was right.

What they notice is the way the new Fire Lord gazes at her, looking impressed, and that colour rises in her face.

When Katara becomes Fire Lady, people whisper that the Moon Spirit was once her friend. It is also known that when the Avatar’s friends saved the people of Jang Hui, the Painted Lady chose to appear to Katara, and Katara alone.

“Well, the Painted Lady is stronger than before,” anyone who visits Jang Hui says.

“And,” add the people who live there, “she heals people as well as plants now, too.”

*

The Fire Lord storms into his chambers, pulling off his robes and fuming.

“He’s taxing his people to starvation,” Zuko seethes. The chair-back is starting to smoke, gently, where his white-knuckled hands are gripping it. “And I can’t find any proof of the ministers he’s bribed! I swore I’d be a different leader than my father, Katara, I can’t do things on a whim, but I’m being caught in the net of my own laws and I’m letting my people down!”

Katara twists in her chair, resting her hands over his. “Zuko,” she soothes, “this is not your fault. You will bring Shu Yan down."

Zuko sighs, his shoulders slumping. “It’s been months,” he says. “Months of digging through files and folders and finding nothing.”

“He’s been playing this game longer than you’ve been alive, Zuko,” Katara says, standing. She tugs him away from the table, towards the loveseat on the balcony, because Zuko has been stuck in his office all day and she wants him to feel the sun on his face. It calms him.

“Yes, and he knows it,” Zuko says, bitterly, following her out. As she sits, he leans on the rail, gazing out over the palace city. “Every time he looks at me… oh, outwardly, he’s respectful, but I can see behind his eyes that he knows I’ll never catch him out. Court politics are complex, and even though I’ve changed a lot of laws… there are still people who know that they owe their positions to Shu Yan. And I can’t find the paper trail.”

For a few moments, there are no sounds on the balcony except the wind and the birds.

“Zuko,” Katara says, “do you remember Jang Hui?”

He comes to sit next to her. “The village you saved?” She blushes, looking pleased and embarrassed at the same time. He kisses her. “Yes, I remember it. I also remember that you will never, ever turn your back on people who need you.”

She blushes even harder, and thumps him. “Quiet,” she says, but she looks more pleased than ever. “I meant it. I still mean it. Remember how horrified your ministers were when I started visiting the military hospitals to heal the soldiers?”

“You mean, ‘A Fire Lady does not sully her hands with common work!’?” Zuko squeaks – a spot-on impression of his most apoplectic advisor.

“Yes. And do you recall how crime levels in the city dropped dramatically after I started going to the public hospitals every day, and people started to say that we were blessed?”

Zuko kisses her head. “I’m very proud of you, my love,” he says, “but I don’t know how that will help me.”

She rolls her eyes like he’s being stupid. “All right. I have another question. Do you remember, in the war, when we were enemies?”

“I remember you offering to heal my uncle,” he smiles. “I was so ungrateful. I’m sorry.”

“And when a spirit stole the Avatar away from a Fire Nation fortress, and the rumour started to run around the Earth Kingdom that the spirits were unhappy with the war?”

He stares at her, open-mouthed, and she looks triumphant.

“Did you know that when Aang joined with the Ocean Spirit, even people in the FIre Nation started to fear that the spirits would seek retribution for what Zhao had done to the moon? Your admirals may have been blithely convinced of success, but your father sent Azula into the field for a reason: he needed to make it clear that Azula was his true heir, so that people couldn’t talk about replacing him with his daughter in the hope that she would be more moderate. That she would please the spirits more as the Fire Lord.” Katara stops, because Zuko is still staring at her.

“Katara,” he says, “you’re a _genius_. Folk tales as propaganda! Brilliant!”

“And we can take a look for those files.” She flips her hair back over her shoulder. “I’m pretty good,” she concedes, modestly.

“Zhao wanted the Blue Spirit found because the stories that he was attacking the Fire Nation – one of the Fire Nation’s own spirits – was undermining troop morale,” Zuko says, his face alight. “I wonder how quickly I can find another mask.”

Katara smiles. “I’m going to need some rouge, and a bigger hat.”

*

When they hear that the Painted Lady is ranging far from their village and keeping company with the Blue Spirit, the people of the Jang Hui raise their eyebrows.

When they hear that the aristocracy is aflame with the way secret documents have come to light because servants who lived in fear are independent and well-fed, they think it’s justice.

When they hear that the Painted Lady is healing the sick while the Blue Spirit brings food to the hungry all across the Fire Nation, they start to wonder.

It comes to them, tales trickling in like drips filling a well, that the Painted Lady has beautiful bronze skin and eyes that shine like sapphires, and they smile. By the light of the full moon – because the Moon is her friend –  they swear a solemn pact, and keep her secret, and are proud that their Fire Lady never turns her back.

Sometimes, they are asked how they feel about _their_ spirit taking it upon herself to leave the river and to wander all across the Fire Nation.

What they say is that it’s clear the spirits love this Fire Lord and his Water Tribe wife. That their love has made the nation prosperous, and their fairness has brought balance to the world.

If any one of them ever wonders about the Blue Spirit, and remembers the way their Fire Lord gazed at the girl from the Water Tribe who saved the world, they keep it close and do not tell a soul.

Not directly.

*

The children of Jang Hui grow up with a new bedtime story.

“The Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady met one night on the river,” their parents say, pulling the blankets up tight. “They were displeased with the state of the war, and they wanted to know whether it was wrong to interact with the world of people. The Moon Spirit, who was once a human girl, begged them to do what she could not: to look after the mortals that she loved.

“When the war was over, they did not know what to do. They returned to the river, and said, ‘We have helped to end the war, Moon Spirit. But what is our place in the world now?’

“The Moon Spirit looked down, and saw that they were drawn to the human world, because they had once been human themselves. She also saw that they did not want to be alone. ‘The war is done,’ she says, ‘but the world is unchanged, and people still cry out for justice.’

“The Moon married them there on the river, and said, ‘Travel together and make each other stronger, so that you do not ever turn your back on the people who need you.’

“So the Painted Lady leaves the river, sometimes, because all people deserve to be healed, not just the ones that you know well. And the Blue Spirit travels with her, and feeds the hungry, because whoever you are, rich or poor, you still must eat to live.”

The parents of Jang Hui smile as their children yawn, and ask, “Can we hear the story about the Moon now?”

Blowing out the candle, their parents promise, “You can hear that one tomorrow.”

 


End file.
